


phantom shadows on the floor

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Bookstore AU, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Post Duel, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burr's Used Books - open since 1762<br/>Possibly (definitely) Haunted</p>
            </blockquote>





	phantom shadows on the floor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [humanradiohead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanradiohead/gifts).



For the first two months, Hamilton’s is angry, spilling over with frothing rage.

It’s perfectly understandable; still, Aaron wishes he weren’t. It’s bad for business to have a furious spirit hanging around the store. Nobody wants to be in a room full of people screaming at each other, and while Hamilton wouldn’t raise his voice in an argument, the sheer intensity of his anger has a similar effect. Aaron finds disassembled pens, spilled inkwells, and ripped paper strewn across the room almost every morning before he opens shop.

Aaron simply allows himself an extra forty-five minutes to clean up in the mornings and lives with it.

 

After a while, though, Hamilton calms. His presence in the bookstore feels less angry and more weary; it’s hard to tell, sometimes, when Aaron is alone and when he isn’t.

Business picks up again. Now that Hamilton’s calmed, he’s become a curiosity rather than a turnoff. Every few days there’s a new book on the shelves, written out by hand in an elegant script; Aaron finds the pages on his desk and binds the books himself, writes Adotham as the author in a private joke that only he and Hamilton will understand.

After a few weeks, people begin to specifically request Adotham’s books. Hamilton may be invisible, but Aaron can still tell that he’s smirking.

 

Five months after Hamilton’s death, Elizabeth Hamilton-Schuyler arrives at the bookstore.

She barely glances at Aaron before she heads to the biography section, all the way in the back, sits down crosslegged on the floor like a small child, and starts speaking softly to the empty air.

She stays there for the rest of the day. Aaron doesn’t try to butt in, but he can hear Eliza (and sometimes Alexander as well) as he goes about his day. The call each other Alex and Betsey, longing for one another tangible in their voices.

(Aaron has never missed Theodosia as acutely as he does right now.)

 

Alexander makes himself known only to Aaron and Eliza, now. The books keep appearing, though Aaron keeps them as often as he sells them.

The ghost doesn’t seem to mind either way - he’s finally found something that Alexander has no opinion on, and the thought makes him laugh.

 

He develops something of a reputation - Aaron Burr, the recluse with the haunted bookstore, who speaks aloud to empty rooms. Some say he is still grieving; others say he is mad. Even he can’t always tell.

    (In his defense, oftentimes the rooms aren’t really empty.)


End file.
